1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to the assigning of MAC addresses to clients of a local area network system.
2. The Background Art
The widespread use and acceptance of the Internet has generated much excitement, especially among those who see advantages in networking their voice, data and graphical communications.
Many individuals, businesses, schools and others use a local-area network (“LAN”) as their network system or the LAN may be part of a larger network system. A LAN is a short-distance data communications network (which may be within a building or campus) used to link together computers and peripheral devices under some form of standard control.
When using a LAN, a MAC address is required. A MAC address is a standardized data link layer that is required for every port or device that connects to a LAN. Other devices in the network use these MAC addresses to locate specific ports in the network and to create and update routing tables and data structures. “MAC” stands for Media Access Control which is the lower of the two sublayers of the data link layer defined by the IEEE. The MAC sublayer handles access to shared media, such as whether token passing or contention will be used.